Perspectives

Perspectives, based in Montreal, is a full service interior design firm: our specialty lies in the creation and execution of city and country properties with a highly efficient and organized team of architects, contractors, cabinetmakers, upholsterers, and window dressers.

We pride ourselves on incorporating the aesthetic and budgetary needs of our clients into the planned proposal of the project and on adhering to these needs in the final phase of the project.

Sunday, April 24

What is it about the colours that make up our world so very difficult for people to live with? Everyday, in almost every way, we are experiencing a very colourful world, from our early morning jog to our late evening activity: from our commercial spaces to our retail spaces, from our workplaces to our leisure places, and from our green spaces to our indoor spaces. Yet to choose to live with any one of these familiar colours seems to be no easy task.

Yves Klein , the French artist working in the 1950's , responded to his external stimuli by creating his own cosmic colour, IKB, which he splattered on blank canvas, human body, and everyday objets. To him, this intense monochromatic blue was symbolic of his mystical connection to his universe, and it was his filtering lens through which he saw the contradictory notion of art expression and personal expression, how our interiority defines our responses to our exteriority. His trademark cobalt blue was his way of satirizing the idea of meaning in abstract art and sabotaging the viewer's need to find such meaning: the artistic brushstroke is a gestural joke for we all bring to the work of art our own set of limiting ideas and expected notions. Only when we are free from these cultural restraints and see simply "the void" can we assume to understand our responses and learn from them.

And so too with our colour choices. When we challenge the expected "how to" underpinnings of an interior space, such as using white mouldings and white doors as the surefire contrast to paint colour, then our challenges to expected notions set us free to use colour choice as our own personal path to freedom of expression.

It is time to vote in Canada, and once again we must be responsible citizens and exercise our democratic right. In Quebec, the mosaic makeup of the poll booth workers is a testament to the allophone society our politicians have created, in spite of themselves. Years and years of backbiting, bickering, and bastardly slogans and speeches have turned most of us away from an exclusive view of our French society to an open-minded one of inclusivity: we are all welcome. At the advance polling booth I attended, the workers were a poster for the picture of a multicultural society, for it shows people from the Caribbean nation to the Asian continent, from the Anglo to the Euro to the Franco, all ages, all faces, all colours, yet all workers conversing and instructing in our two official languages.

But, of course, there always is one in a group, and he, newly arrived to the line, only heard a lovely elderly poll worker respond to a question in English. And he, smugly armed with his sense of entitlement , annoyingly asked that this lovely elderly lady, obviously from a Caribbean nation, speak to him in French. And so she did, in a lilting manner with a great degree of fluency . It was a joyful moment for the notion of respect : her fluency stole his thunder and wiped the smug grin off his face.

To listen to another viewpoint is to respect another way of thinking. In the world of design and architecture, we may come to a project with an armed set of conventions and a sample bag of some tried and some new formulas, our own sense of entitlement. But we too must listen. All projects have two official languages: the one of the client and the one of the designer.

Tuesday, April 19

A design picture is not worth a thousand words, for as in life, the attraction of the image is a reflection of what we seek, and a confirmation of a point of view: a client chooses the image as an example of what he or she wants, and the designer looks at that chosen image as an example of what he or she does not want. An isolated image of a room has no context, for it floats around a subtext of a point of view, in itself subjective and confining. However, when the designer chooses an image, that image has a context: it works as an example of what could be when boundaries are pushed and new vistas are explored.

In my blog my aim is to create a philosophical environment to explore the challenges that need to be overcome in order to create a harmonious space that caters to the needs and the desires of the client without having to compromise the creative vision of the designer. The rub always lies within these two opposing contradictions: the clients who will live in the new space and the designer who needs to impose a visual order therein. These challenges include not only layout, furniture and fabric but also colour, texture and mood.

About Me

Judy Colle has been creating home environments in Quebec, Florida, and Vermont for 18 years.
Her hallmarks of design are comfort, colour,and camaraderie and these ingredients make up the flavourful
mix of her rooms.
She has approached each job with an
enthusiastic commitment to integrity of
style, quality of service, and honesty
of approach.
www.judycolleinteriordesign.ca